Dorm Power Station/Souped Up NiMH Charging Station

Introduction: Dorm Power Station/Souped Up NiMH Charging Station

I have a mess of a power station. I wanted to condense everything that charged onto one workbench and have room to solder/etc on it.

Power thing list: Cell phone (broken, but it charges my phone batteries, so its always plugged in and trickle charging Nokia lion batteries)

Drill charger

Solder iron

NiMH charger

Volt adaptor (used for the charger cooling, more on that later)

Bluetooth headset charger*

Shark vaccum charger*

*= not pictured because of overwhelming size of the plug wart.

Step 1: Soup Up Your NiMH Charger With a Cooling System

I have 4 Duracell rechargeables that have served me well and they are pretty old (1800mAh was awesome two years ago! wow!).They get pretty damned hot when you charge them, so I needed a cooling system to charge them at +/- room temp. Even if you have them charging for like a minute, they feel pretty warm (about 90F) to the touch because they are dying. I need some eneloops. Anyone care to donate to my Sanyo battery fund? Paypal: aaronreihl@gmail.com Plzzzz! :)

Solution? A old fan scavenged from a PSU. It's 12vDC and is rated for 400mAh. I have a variable power supply I got from some deal at Walmart like 5 years ago that I dug out of my closet from hell (lotsa junk). It had some weird ass connector that I chopped off and stuck the fan on.

Just put two Nerf darts on the charger and the fan is spaced out enough to deliver the room temp air freely.

It gets pretty hot (about 105F) too, so I just set an aluminum heatsink on top of it. When I want to change the fan speed (voltage), I just take it off and change, then place it back on.

Result: Cool batteries! They feel about room temp to the touch.

Step 2: Add Other Charging Stuff

With only 1 outlet left for a plug wart, I chose the phone. It trickle charges my Nokia LiIon batteries.

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3 Comments

there may be something wrong with your CHARGER...
those batteries should NOT get hot... the "cheap" one I picked up even has a thermal probe in the charging compartment that slows the current to trickle if the sensor reads over 80F. as a bonus, slow-charging batteries are a sure sign it's time to crank the ac :-)
The fix may be as simple as replacing a failing cap, in the charger circuit.
worth looking into, to help preserve those dinosaur batteries.